From founding member Frankie Van Keuren :

"So, let’s just kind of back it up to 2016 - this is the first year that Minor Mishap Marching Band went to Honk Rio in November. So, it was this time of year that's how we met these nice guys who taught us “Soulfinger” and gave us the charts for the song. That's also how we were first introduced to Orchestra Voadora. This experience is what inspired Datri later to go and live in Brazil for several months so that was 2016, which was the first time to see a bloco.

Then in 2017, we decided to go back again to Honk Rio, and in the 5-6 months leading up to that, Datri had actually moved down to Rio so that she could be more immersed in the music scene now there, get inspired, live a sweet international life; and she got immersed with Orchestra Voadora., which was one of the bloco groups.

What was really interesting about them is how they got ready for Honk Rio - the way that they would do it was by hosting workshops, where there would be musicians, who could come and often be learning the music of the bands by ear or by seeing someone else play the part. Sometimes there were charts, but that wasn't always the case. The whole model of “hey come stand next to me and learn the rhythm from the person next to you” seemed really interesting to us as a sort of learning model and concept, and so Datri got to know Orchestra Voadora. methodology that way.

Then Honk Rio was held in November 2017, and we all came down. It's this big reunion with Datri, and she's sharing with us all the things she's excited about and what she shared with Orchestra Voadora. When we were at the Honk music festival, there were other blocos that were participating, where they're basically like these giant moving music parties - huge block parties - so there would be a band, usually enormous with dozens of people, and then it would just move: go down the street, so it would go into different plazas.

People would just follow the music. That was a really cool concept, and that's how, like, we thought of "Blowco" cause we're just like we were talking about the name, and someone was like, "Oh, we should call ourselves 'Blowcomotion' cause it's like a double term". Honestly, what was more inspiring was Orchestra Voadora, like blocos are cool, but we weren't exactly seeking to be a party band. It was more that the learning model that was interesting and this was particularly attractive to me because the year before in 2016, I was not playing drums - I was the flag bearer for Minor Mishap - and then one of the Mishaps during a parade (it was actually Queerbomb) just hands me a drum and says “you’re a drummer now” and I just realized you don't really get that opportunity in other bands and so it was really attractive to hear about a band like Orchestra Voadora where that openness was very common. It was like you don't have a lot of experience, fine; here's an instrument, or here get one from a friend - just join in, you don't have to audition or have a pedigree or anything like that, and so that's what really resonated with me.

We got super inspired and excited - in the spring of 2018, Datri, Niko, and I met - we’re also starting to bring in some other Minor Mishap friends to join our efforts: Sean Collins, Norian Capparelli Burkowitz. This is also when we received our first grant from Chesswatyr - who were one of our first funders. So, it was us and then also Jeffrey Kuhn. We started to meet and ask what if we created this thing, and what it would be - mostly Datri, Niko, and I had been discussing things, then Sean, Norian, and Jeff came in later.

We needed a location, so in the spring of 2018, that's when we started rehearsing in Chestnut Pocket Park, which is located over on Chestnut and MLK - truthfully, we lived walking distance from it, so we're gonna pick a spot that we can walk to, and so that's what we did. I think that's around, maybe when Rocky started coming to rehearsal with a few others. We started off with maybe a handful of instructors; I don't even know if we paid them back then. Sean was high brass; Jeff Kuhn was one of our conductors.

We really liked Chestnut Pocket Park since it was within walking distance from where we were but we also wanted someplace that was like Eastside and felt accessible. One

of the main things was you know if we're gonna be playing, that this is open to everyone, we want it to be affordable so that you can come for free, but you can donate if you feel so inclined. That was always something that we really wanted to focus on.

But there was kind of a debate at the beginning, like are we an education band? Are we a party band? There were some debates about that, but early on, we agreed that we're an education band. That's what we wanna focus on as a community band. We performed as Blowcomotion publicly for the first time at HonkTX in 2018. That was fun, but I think we're just like a dozen people at that time; we were pretty ragtag and small. Then we put up more marketing and posters, and more people started joining and becoming part of our community."